


The Trees Are Filled With Memories

by TheTiniestFish



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Archivist Sasha AU, Archivist!Sasha, Combining two AUs to make everything more complicated, F/F, Mentioned Character Death, Mentioned Sasha James/Helen Richardson, Spoilers, Time Travel, Tma season 5 spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:47:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23448775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTiniestFish/pseuds/TheTiniestFish
Summary: Sasha has been the Archivist for a decade now. She's fought all kinds of threats and won against the best of them.But even with all the good sense in the world, she couldn't keep her people safe forever. And alone, there is only so much she can do.So, at the end of everything, she uses Helen's last gift to travel back and fix things, or die trying.
Relationships: Sasha James/Gertrude Robinson
Comments: 6
Kudos: 53





	1. Chapter 1

Well.

It had taken a decade, but here she was. Sasha James, alone in a broken world.

As the words had left her mouth she had felt nothing but satisfaction, Jonah’s smug glee at his great work finally coming to fruition. It had felt so alien, the wonder as the incantation had torn its way out of her throat. Then, that satisfaction had escaped her, giving way to a quiet dread that filled her and surrounded her. Everything just felt… numb.

She was utterly alone now. Tim was dead. Martin was in the Lonely- and Jon- Jon was-

She had failed each of them. 

Tim had died avenging his brother’s death so many years ago, saving the world from the Unknowing. Or so they had all thought, she supposed. She had known for years that the rituals didn’t work, after the tape of Gertrude’s death had made its way to her desk. How could Gertrude have stopped that Dark ritual, after all, unless instead the ritual had collapsed under its own strain, and the rituals themselves were fundamentally flawed? The thought that Tim’s death was for nothing sat bitter and heavy on her chest.

Martin… She had seen Martin since it happened, watching her from a distance, barely distinguishable from the fog that blanketed the night as she had walked home. He wasn’t just a victim of the Lonely, not anymore. She had seen people walk into that mist of his, and not all had walked out again. She hadn’t said a word. Neither had he, as he walked on by, nothing to suggest that he had seen her but a slight tension in his shoulders. 

Jon had survived the longest, by some miracle. He’d been with her, helping her keep her… cravings in check for so many years. He couldn’t leave. She had not been the only one too scared to pay the price demanded of them.Jon would never be the Archivist, but honestly if he’d survived much longer the Beholding might very well have claimed him properly to serve in some other way. It didn’t bear thinking about, anyway. She had seen the look on his face as his movements had stiffened, even as the threads that surrounded him grew ever clearer. She had seen it, even through tightly closed eyes. She hadn’t wanted to watch, as the Web took him. She didn’t have much choice, these days. 

She wished she could forget, but she remembered everything now.

There had been others, of course. Daisy, the hunter, lost to the Buried for so long before she had worked up the courage to save her. By then, there had been so little left of her. Basira visited her in the Archives, sometimes. Sasha could see the pain in her eyes as she left. Melanie had left. Sasha had never been brave enough to pay that price. 

She sat there, on the floor of the house she had sacrificed so much to reach, and cried. She lay there and wept for the world that, for all her knowledge and her efforts and her sacrifices (she tried not to think of Jon), she had still failed and there was nothing more to do but watch.

And she did, until the tiniest sound pulled her out of her dazed state. The creaking of a door- but wait, wasn’t the door on the other side of the-

Oh.

“Hi Helen,” she sighs.

There was no response.

Strange, usually by now Helen would be out here, toying with her. She liked to tease Sasha, and after all these years they’d become something not entirely unlike friends. Having an easy escape route had been especially helpful back when she’d been ending all those rituals. That was one thing she wouldn’t need to do anymore.

She turned.

“Helen?”

There it was. The yellow door. But Helen was nowhere in sight. Where was she?

And suddenly Sasha Knew.

Oh. There was no Helen Richardson anymore. Why would the Spiral keep its Distortion so incredibly human when it could warp the world and remove the twisted fragments of identity from those impossible, endless corridors? Helen Richardson was a distraction, and she couldn’t be in quite so many places as the pure chaos that was the Distortion. So… she wasn’t. She wasn’t the Distortion, wasn’t an avatar- wasn’t anything.

The grief already crushed Sasha’s chest with all the weight of the world. What was another life lost, in all that pain?

The door was still there.

And as it creaked open, Sasha Knew that this was going to be her last chance to make things right. Time is difficult in the Distortion’s hallways, after all.

She forced herself to rise, and the sudden motion in her winded state left her gasping for air that she was no longer sure she needed. If Helen was truly gone, this last gift wouldn’t be there long. The Distortion was pure Spiral now, and the Spiral wanted to stay and consume the fear of all in this changed world. She and Helen had done well against Jonah’s machinations for so long, but it only took one little slip-up and suddenly the world was gone, unchangeable. To put things back, to remove the entities- well, any attempt of that sort would be like putting a cork back in a bottle, and hoping that fixed the stain on the floor.

No, this was her only chance, and she knew it as she pulled the handle and the madness of the corridors took her.

She was going to make things right.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gertrude meets an unexpected visitor.

It was only Gertrude’s third day down here in the stale air of the Archives since getting back from Scotland, and life had already begun to settle back into a routine. Eric was off on his lunch break, and her other two assistants were researching statements out in London. So soon after the counter-ritual, she couldn’t in good conscience let them go and complete field research alone. It slowed the work, but the work would only be slowed further if she lost all of her assistants to the Lightless Flame. They couldn’t hurt her- she knew that much- but there was nothing to say that her colleagues were safe. No, best to stick together, just in case.

It was frustratingly normal, sitting there in her Archive, reading statements and doing routine research. Just a few days ago she had averted an apocalypse, and the only thing she had to show for it was the way that normality just kept ticking on. There were no grand awards, no awe from the people around her as she walked the streets. She wasn’t some grand hero to them. No one would write about her or sing her praises. Her only prize, for years of effort, was that quiet mediocrity kept marching onward.

Oh, she knew that it was better this way, the world never knowing how close it could have come to the edge, but still. It was strange. She allowed herself that much, as she went about her day, organising and reshuffling and planning her next move. The sheer banality of it all grated on her.

She knew all at once that the quietness of the morning would be lost as all at once a heavy feeling of wrongness overcame her and static overlaid her thoughts. She knew deep in her bones that something had changed. She looked up sharply, ready to see any manner of monstrosity.

Ah. Well then. The world did still know how to surprise her after all.

There was a door in her office.

It was not the door that was supposed to lead out of it, no. The door was a deep, sunshine yellow, and the designs her eyes traced across its surface writhed and changed and tied themselves in ever-looping knots as she followed them to their logical ends and they just kept going and maybe there would be no end to it, her eyes chasing the lines as they moved in impossible ways, endless and drawing her in further with every inch-

With great effort, she tore her eyes away. Some manifestation of the Spiral, she thought, or perhaps the Web. She, of course, made no move to approach. Whatever it was that seemed to have taken some kind of interest, besting her would not be quite so easy as dangling a trap in front of her nose and hoping she would walk right in. This thing would have to expend at least a little effort, if it wanted to ensnare her in its webs or mind games.

The door slowly creaked open. The creaking was that of a much, much larger door opening and in that moment Gertrude chalked it down as a manifestation of the Spiral. Trusting anything from that door would be a rather stupid way to go, and trusting herself not to get pulled in felt unwise, so she remained where she was, planted firmly in her leather desk chair. The only way out of her office skirted uncomfortably close to the offending doorway and after what happened in Scotland, Gertrude wasn’t quite willing to perform any... dashing heroics. 

So she sat, and she waited, and she watched. She was, she thought bitterly, rather good at that.

And just as Gertrude finally allowed herself to take her eyes off of the suspicious incursion into the Archives’ interior design, a woman fell out of the doorway.

She raised her eyebrows. Well. Never let it be said that life as Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute was boring.

She made no moves other than inching her hand towards the phone on her desk, and continued to sit there, stock still, even as the woman stood up, and dusted herself off. This woman that stood in front of her was… shockingly normal, for something that had just tumbled out of a manifestation of such a thing as the Spiral. Of course, the Spiral delighted in challenging and defying expectations, so with something like this it was difficult to tell whether the person in front of her was, in fact, some ordinary woman who had fallen prey to one of the Fourteen.

That wasn’t to say that the woman in front of her was entirely unremarkable. As she stood there, she rather towered over Gertrude’s desk. She had to be one of the tallest women that she had met- and in her line of work, and all the people that she met over her five years as Head Archivist, that was somewhat of an achievement. Long brown hair hung in unbrushed clumps over lean shoulders and their slouch suggested that perhaps this woman was even taller than Gertrude had initially surmised. 

What’s more, this strange intruder’s clothes were, for lack of a better term, in tatters, and her skin was coated in a thin, dusty layer of grime. When she had dusted herself off, the dust had risen into the air in complex, shimmering spirals before disappearing forever into nothingness. Regardless of whether this woman was some Incarnation of the Spiral, she was certainly Marked in some way. If the doorway had not already been enough to make that particular assessment.

Ah. Gertrude met the woman’s gaze, and suddenly was sure that in that exact moment, she knew what it felt like to be a slide under a microscope, poked and and prodded and cut up in order to be understood, to be known by an unfamiliar and unwanted presence that stared and knew unthinkingly and without an ounce of care for what this morsel below its endless gaze thought beyond what it could pick apart and understand-

The woman looked away. She looked almost… ashamed. Scared, even.

Served her right, Gertrude thought, filling the void the presence had left in her mind with contempt. It simply wouldn’t do to go snooping around like that. Especially in such an unnerving manner.

Her contempt must have been evident in her expression, because a moment later an “I’m sorry,” came a voice from in front of her, and with her thoughts in that state of disarray, it took a moment for Gertrude to connect the soft voice to the sharp presence in front of her.

Gertrude put herself together and spoke, pouring as much clipped, hardened steel into her voice as she possibly could.  
“Right. Who are you and what the hell are you doing in my Archives.”

The figure in front of her looked startled, though Gertrude watched as the stranger’s expression twisted from shock to annoyance.  
“Oh, of course Helen would go and drop me in the middle of the bloody Archives, which are of course occupied because the Distortion is never simple about these things and who am I kidding, the Spiral was never about making things easy for anyone. It absolutely figures that it would dump me way, way back and mess everything up. I don’t even know what happens this far back-”

“-That’s all very well and good,”Gertrude interrupted (because honestly, she was starting to suspect this stranger would just keep going otherwise and that was not going to be conducive to her search for any kind of understanding of the situation), ”But who are you, and -I believe I may have said this before- why are you here, in my office? And especially through such a different mode of transport- were the stairs out of order?” She was beginning to lose her patience with this strange interloper, although she would never let it show.

“Oh! Right. Since I’m here, I may as well make introductions. I’m Sasha James,” She says, sticking out her hand, “And I’m the Archivist.” She paused. “I suppose I’m an Archivist now. There’s not really meant to be plural, honestly. I, unfortunately, serve the Beholding. Like you do.”

Gertrude sighed. The sigh was of the drawn-out, long-suffering sort, and she let her exasperation creep into her expression.  
“Yes, well. I got that much from your little look-in, when you decided to peel apart bits of my brain. It was rather enlightening as to who your particular patron is, thank you.”

The woman- no, Sasha James, mouthed a quiet ‘Oops’.  
“Sorry? I’m not… I’m not particularly good at controlling it. Never quite had that knack for staying human that you did.” She paused. “Do. Good grief, I’m never going to quite get over that, am I?”

“I presume,” said Gertrude, “That you know me, in some capacity.”

Sasha looked sheepish and finally withdrew the hand that she had stretched out for a handshake that had gone unreciprocated.  
“You were my predecessor. I spent years trying, and usually failing, to follow in your footsteps. I stopped the end of the world at least-” her face fell, “Well. I thought I saved the world. Turns out, the rituals don’t work, everything was for nothing, and my own efforts to stop the end times ultimately just shuffled everything along that bit faster. So.”

Gertrude gestured to the chair that was usually reserved for statement-givers. She suspected that the two of them would be there for a while.

“Slow down. Tell me what happened.”

This. This was going to be a very, very long week.

\------

“So yeah. That’s about what’s happened, from what I know of it. What do you think?”

Gertrude stared.

“Don’t you have some kind of plan? Some idea of what to do?” 

Gertrude didn’t have some scathing quip for that one. She was still searching for something to say to this strange woman who had staggered into her archives, and the silence was deafening.

“God, you were some kind of mystical, legendary figure to us, did you know that? Gertrude Robinson, hardened badass, taking down all the monsters of the world, sacrificing whatever and whoever she needed to all in the name of the greater good, of getting it done,” Sasha choked out, with a bitter laugh. “Tim looked up to you, even sacrificed his life to save the world. Well, tried to, anyway. The great Gertrude Robinson, saviour of the world. Doing whatever it took.”

“I-”

“Turns out you started almost as clueless as the rest of us. Go figure.”

Shock and hurt quickly gave way to offense and anger, as Gertrude found herself glaring daggers over horned glasses.  
“Forgive me, Miss… James, was it? Forgive me, for not immediately having all of the answers to every problem. I am not, perhaps, the figure you have built up in your head based on every success I have achieved. I am sure that there were many failures that you have not been made aware of. It isn’t on my head if I don’t live up to your every expectation. That is something you have built on your own accord and I quite honestly want no part in it.”

“I-” Sasha started, but was cut off by a single look as Gertrude kept going.

“If you came here to help as you say, I don’t think either of us will benefit from this pettiness. If you wish to secure my assistance in this, you will have to try harder than insulting my competence.”

Gertrude took a breath and readjusted her glasses.  
“And for that matter, based on your rather harried appearance as you burst through that door into this time and place, you don’t seem to have been rather successful yourself.”

There was a long pause. Minutes ticked by on her clock, Gertrude was beginning to feel like she might need to usher this strange woman out of her office in her silent state, when the interloper finally broke the heavy silence with a large sigh.

“I know, I can’t just burst in here and hope for some kind of plan. That’s unfair and I get that.” She went quiet for a good minute fighting for the right words. “You have to understand, I came here from a broken world, everyone I cared about dead or worse. I watched them get taken by the Entities one by one, become Incarnations, or just plain die, and every time all I could do was watch. I don’t think I chose to come here- stepping through that door was just the last thing I could think to do.”

Sasha took a long, shuddery breath.  
“This was my last hope, and so I meet the great Gertrude Robinson and it’s like maybe, just maybe I have a shot at this, at saving the world. But of course, you’ve been at this, what, five years? And bloody hell, I have more experience with all this than you do. How ridiculous is that? I fucked up so badly the world ended, and I’m the experienced one in this situation. Fuck.”

She went quiet again.

“Are you alright?” Gertrude asked, not entirely expecting or caring for any answer.

“Oh, yeah. Just peachy. What I’m trying to say is, I’m sorry, I guess? And also, this is a very, very awkward question now, but do you have anywhere I could stay the night?”

Gertrude blinked. Oh.

She would, of course need somewhere to stay- and considering how she kept most of her important things in her office- well. It just wouldn’t do to turn her out on the streets, and letting her unaccompanied in the Archives- well. There were all kinds of things in there, and not all of them were properly labelled.

Getrude sighed, and as she gave a reluctant answer, Sasha’s face lit up in a broad smile that revealed a little dimple in her left cheek. Her eyes, which had seemed sharp and hard, softened and the light filled them.

Something caught in Gertrude’s chest, and she forced the feeling down. This was a purely practical arrangement, and nothing more.

(Gertrude was a very good liar).

\-----  
Gertrude sat down alone in her office with an ungraceful thud. She stared down at the papers strewn out in front of her, and began to busy herself. She set about organising them, sorting them into categories. Forms and the like on the left. Half-written letters on the second shelf up. Statements in their appropriate boxes, and her favourite fountain pen. It had been a gift from James, upon her promotion to this office. A gift from Jonah Magnus, she supposed, upon selection to become his new Archivist. That would take some adjusting to, but Gertrude was nothing if not adaptable. She would simply have to adapt to the situation, and act accordingly.

Oh, Gertrude didn’t do things because she enjoyed them. That had been her saving grace in this new world, full of twisted creatures taking delight in despicable acts. No, Gertrude Robinson reasoned that something rather needed to be done, and then set about making it so in the most efficient way possible. She didn’t need to feel good, didn’t need her deeds to be known and congratulated upon by others, only allowing herself the quiet satisfaction in a job well done.

What was it Sasha had said? ‘The great Gertrude Robinson, saviour of the world, doing whatever it took’. Those words comforted and unsettled her in equal measures. After all, that kind of reputation tended (in her admittedly limited experience) to be hard fought and hard won, and the idea of having to fend off multiple apocalypses in her lifetime did not appeal to her, regardless of her steely resolve. There was a difference between knowing you could weather a storm, and preparing to go and have a lovely cycle into the centre of a tornado. One was comforting. The other was- well. The other would only appeal to a certain family that seemed to keep cropping up in both historical and contemporary statements, if anyone.

No sane person would be happy about resigning themselves to a life of fear and danger and sacrifice. And, although she dearly wished otherwise, that the past couple of years’ revelations were the products of a runaway imagination and too many stories keeping her down in the dark, she was uncompromisingly sound of mind. 

Good lord, the way that Sasha had spoken of that other version of her, in some strange blend of bitterness and awe, sowed terror through her bones. The figure that the future Archivist had seen, distorted through the tiny snapshots of tapes and statements, was both strange to her and starkly familiar. She had not yet cultivated that careful persona that this “Sasha” seemed to have picked up on, and honestly as much as she had fantasised about people knowing what she’d done, looking up to her for saving the world and loving her, this cold creature that her successor had seen troubled her.

She let herself slump in her chair, just a little, a button on her cardigan catching on the edge of her desk as she sighed and put her head into her hands. She could allow herself these small respites in private. The unseen eyes that followed her every move would just have to live with the fact that their Archivist was imperfect and still very much capable of feeling. It had been a long, long month, and she was starting to get a headache from every revelation that seemed intent on tripping her up and breaking her. 

Bound to a creature of pure destruction and fire, and herself with the full potential to be warped and shaped into a ritual. That was not a happy or pleasant thought. Gertrude Robinson and Agnes Montague, people with something in common other than their binding, manipulated into place by the Web and sealed in that remote circle in that Scottish forest.

She could feel that bond between her and the Lightless Flame’s sacrificial lamb as it seared through her even now, the heat just as painful as when it had first flared through her very being. She wasn’t sure it would ever quite go away. Not for either of the unlucky pair. Though perhaps the binding had not been entirely for nothing- she almost shuddered to think of what a Desolation ritual would truly look like in motion- but a hollow feeling ached in her chest at the what-ifs.

Now that she thought about it, she was more dangerous to the state of the world than Agnes- after all, her ritual was the only one that anyone knew of that could, and would, actually work. She was one of two people in the world who could twist reality with a few words. The thought was… concerning, to say the least, and would need to be dealt with in due time. But Gertrude had work to do, and plenty of years before the threat became pressing enough to take any more... drastic measures. Provided her new visiting Archivist didn’t slip up in the meantime.

But right that instant, the most immediate concern was Eric coming back in from his lunch break, and striking up a conversation with Miss James. She would have to run introductions and make sure that her assistants were not clued in to the whole situation. The fewer people that kept this secret, the better. No need to present it before another set of eyes and risk exposing their plans to James. Oh, good grief. She couldn’t be thinking like this- Miss James this and James Wright that. She sighed, and settled on referring to the woman by her given name. They would be living together for an undetermined amount of time, after all. 

And then there were the logistics of getting a woman who hadn’t been born yet some kind of identity. Gertrude smiled thinly. The kind of person that Sasha had described would probably have some kind of illicit contacts, someone to ask to forge papers and all that kind of thing, which was no doubt useful, but she found it all rather distasteful. Ah, well. There was no use speculating. Sasha would simply have to find her own way. Based on the scars which littered the woman’s body, a lack of papers seemed to rank quite low on the problems she had faced.

A knock on the door jolted her out of her thoughts. Ah, Eric. Early from his break. Wonderful.

He smiled as he entered, hands laden with cups of tea.  
“So, who’s the lady going through all the boxes, Gertrude? I didn’t see her come in, but she said you gave her permission.”

Gertrude took her mug graciously and took a long, drawn out sip before answering.  
“Her name is Sasha James, and it does appear that she is, at the very least, an Archivist. The role does appear to be plural, these days.”  
At Eric’s expression she allowed herself a humourless laugh. “Yes, quite. I was just as surprised, considering what we’ve learned here.”

“Does James know?”

She smiled thinly, sipping her tea again.  
“I can imagine he does, by now. I’d rather not explain it to him, so if he wants to know more, he’ll just have to wait like the rest of us.”

Eric nodded, slipping back around the door.  
“Alright. If you need anything- I can’t say for sure that I’d actually be able to remove the lady from the building, but…” he trailed off and gestured helplessly.

Gertude nodded.  
“You’ll be the first to know.”

Eric stopped. He turned towards her, to look her in the eyes, some searching expression tugging at the lines of his face. The concern was rather touching, really.  
“Gertrude- be honest with me- do you think she’s dangerous?”

She pursed her lips, and her expression softened just for a moment.  
“Just be careful out there, Eric.”

With one final searching look, he nodded and left her alone, in the blissful quiet of her Archives.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't think I've ever gone from concept to posting this fast before. Hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
